this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2024
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Fuck Cars
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That's an insane take, right? If I as a cyclist blindly ride across a road directly in front of a heavy vehicle, surely it's on me. In what way would that be the heavy vehicle drivers fault?
I actually saw someone do this on El Camino Real in rush hour traffic. Probably the only reason they didn't die is cars were going 20.
This 'take' is close to the law in NL. The shift in responsibility is there to even out the differences in safety mechanisms. The law acknowledges this disparity and seeks to provide additional protection to vulnerable road users. This rule encourages car drivers to exercise extra caution, knowing that they will likely bear legal responsibility in the event of an accident.
It's important to note that the rule imposes strict liability, which means that the motorist is presumed responsible for damages unless evidence strongly indicates otherwise. If the cyclist is partially at fault (e.g., running a red light), liability might be shared, but the motorist is rarely absolved entirely.
Again, insane comparisons, driving a heavy vehicle is in no way similar to intentionally assaulting someone. A more appropriate comparison might be if your lover was punching a punching bag and you dove in front of it mid hard swing, and they had no time to avoid hitting you. Is that your fault or theirs?
If a cyclist runs over a child, who was not visible at all until they ran into their path with no time to stop, on a path designated for bicycles where a pedestrian has no right to be, is the cyclist at fault?
Anyway I think I might be responding to a crazy person, so I'm probably wasting my time, but I'm interested in how deep it goes.
It's not insane, even if it's an unfamiliar concept. @invalid_name@lemm.ee is advocating for what is basically the legal concept known as strict liability. It means that a person is held liable for the consequences of an action, even in the absence of negligence or intent. American courts have applied it to things like crop dusting, or use of explosives, but this exact scenario is the law in the Netherlands. A driver hitting a bicyclist there is strictly liable for at least half of the damages in all unintentional crashes. (That is, when the driver can't prove that bicyclist was trying to get hit.)
I'm not against the law you mentioned, in my opinion everyone should be driving/riding defensively and crashes are often a failure of both parties to some extent. Even if you're technically at fault often the other party could have done something to avoid or minimise the accident.
The insane part was the comparison to scenarios where a party is clearly at fault. How is beating the shit out of a child anywhere near equivalent to hitting a cyclist that has blindly ridden in front of your car with no chance to have predicted it?
Oy, here I thought that a "fuck car" was the motor vehicle analogue of a fuck boy.
You're a bit of a nutter, but that's okay. I only say that because of the fetish analogy.
This is an anti-car community, but when blatantly ridiculous posts (like this one) get popular you get an effect similar to the reddit /all effect. Niche communities get swamped with normies and overrun pretty easily.
More like shooting a gun at a shooting range, where you have a space you’re supposed to shoot, and someone is running across that range and gets hit. Are you a murderer then?
I get the “fuck cars” mentality, I’m with you, but making bad arguments doesn’t help our cause.
Again, I’m with the “fuck cars” ideology. I am not against you. But this is a dumb take.
Should there be shooting ranges everywhere? No. Is the fault of people using shooting ranges that you ran out into one and got shot because you don’t feel it should be there? No.
Maybe it shouldn’t. That’s a fair argument. But you saying that a guy is a murderer when he shot someone when they ran in front of him at a shooting range is not an argument that is going to gain any favor with anyone who isn’t already firmly in your camp, which means that argument is pointless.
I’m not saying don’t advocate for more walkability, but that doesn’t mean walking out into traffic in your neighborhood and getting hit is doing anyone any good. You get hit, drivers think you’re dumb, it was ultimately your fault, the movement for more walkability in urban areas gets set back because some dummy walked into traffic and resulted in a loss of respect from the public about the ideology. Don’t be a detriment to progress out of your own stubbornness of naivety about how progress actually works.
"You car drivers are murderers. By the way, murderers who use cars are awesome!"
You must live a really really weird life. I dunno if it's ultra sad or not, but it's definitely a bizarre worldview to wake up and think "everyone chosing to go to work in the only way available to them for most of the country is basically spraying an ak-47 everywhere they go" You can work to change that -- great, all for it. But presuming the world where you've already won is absolutely bonkers.
Out of mostly amusement to see what you come up with at this point, what makes cyclists not also a bullet for pedestrians in this scenario? Less heavy but can still be deadly to pedestrians.
More poke the insane person and see what fun thing they come up with.
Honestly it sucks that happened to you, but using that as a reason to decide that a whole form of transport is akin to shooting an AK-47 in a dark room (or whatever it was) or beating a child is ridiculous. People get hurt every day from all kinds of vehicles and all kinds of objects.
Sometimes you can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time.